jasonhenley

Snowpocalypse II

Henley Brothers' A Christmas Carol

I just reposted the famous Henley Brothers' A Christmas Carol in higher quality. About three years ago my brother and I finally completed our version of A Christmas Carol. We started it when I was about 12 and just never finished it, but continuity be damned, we finished it, and it's glorious.

Merry Christmas.

Skipping Sunday School Trailer

After our first six months of working on our upcoming documentary Skipping Sunday School, Ashley and I have a trailer to share. Behold!

First Snow of 2009

When I awoke this morning to find snow coming down I decided to make a quick video, here it is:

Trailer Coming Soon!

Last night Ashley and I sat down for the first time to start putting together a trailer for our movie. We've been really eager to create something to represent our project but we've been holding off until we had enough relevant footage, but I think now we finally do. We have about 10 people on camera talking about their thoughts on childhood and religion and yesterday we shot our first kid. She's this really cute third grader who sat down for us and gave us answers from a kid's point of view. 

After stockpiling footage for a few months now and it's just so exciting to see it finally start to come to life and create something cohesive. However, I am really starting to see just how much further we still have to go. 

Demo Reel

After avoiding doing my demo reel for months, I have finally finished it. Check it out!

I Built a Camera Dolly

Over the past week I have been working on building a dolly and tracks. I did the standard skateboard wheel on a big board design.  When I went to Pit Crew to purchase 16 of their finest wheels (I really mean cheapest) they inquired as to why I wanted so many. I explained how the wife and I are making a documentary and would like to build a dolly for it. They were extremely nice and ended up giving me a set of wheels and bearings for free in support of our movie.

The dolly hasn't been 100% finished yet but it is functional. I'm still learning how all these fancy tools my Dad gave me work so the construction is barely adequate, but adequate turns out to be perfectly fine! This entire operation ended up costing around $200.00 because I was too impatient to wait to buy wheels online.

Here's a video of some tests I did with this dolly:

Paranormal Activity

So yesterday Ashley's parents surprised me by taking me to the Best Buy Mobile store in the Annapolis Mall and bought me a 32GB iPhone. Usually trips to the mall with her parents are quite fruitful but this was absolutely ridiculous. So extremely good times!

Being the socialites Ashley and I are, we spent Halloween just the two of us. We decided that our Halloween would consist of some scary movies. We bickered for a while about the level of scary each of us wanted. Long story short, Ashley showed off how good of a wife she is by letting us go to a late night showing of Paranormal Activity.

Paranormal Activity is a story about a couple who is haunted by some kind of mysterious demon. Just like the Blair Witch Project, Paranormal is a faux-documentary pretending to be compiled from the shaky footage created by the movie's characters. Overall we both had a great time with this movie. It was a good length (1 hour 39 minutes) and scary. 

Only because this style of movie has been done before, I had a little trouble early on buying into the excuse for the characters gathering all this footage but after about fifteen minutes I got over it and let go. I can tell you right now that not too much happens in this movie. Most of it's scare power is fueled by anxiety fostering sound effects and subtle shots of 'creepy.' Even knowing that ahead of time, the movie can give you the creeps.

This kind of movie benefits a lot from a public viewing. I'm not sure how good of replay value this movie has, but for a mildly crowded late-night Halloween showing it was perfect for us.

This is It

It was so strange seeing Michael Jackson in his movie This Is It. Coming all the way from his reclusion to this over the top best-of performance, all I can think to say is "What a shame." This man ruins his reputation all through his life and then finally at the moment of possible redemption he kicked the can.

As a long time Michael Jackson fan, I loved the movie. This Is It is basically a movie substitution of what his show would have been, had he gotten the chance to actually perform it. 

To me the movie has have a bitter subtext to it which says, "Look what you could have had..." (insert person you wish to blame here ___________.) The whole time you know the Michael Jackson you see on screen is only days away from death which is enough of a bummer. I however think his appearance was much better then we've all seen lately over the past several years. To be fair the camera rarely ever went in too tight on his face but he had the 90's Michael Jackson stingy hair again instead of that weird straightened thing he had been doing.

The love and effort that went into that show was really special. You see Michael drilling his musicians into playing the songs EXACTLY like how they were played on the albums because he said that's what the audience was expecting. Almost every song had a newly produced video counterpart to play alongside the performance. For Smooth Criminal they spliced MJ into some Humprey Bogart film noir movie. For Thriller they shot all kinds of zombies in 3D, yes the audience was to wear 3D glasses during Thriller, could you expect anything less?

Despite Jacko occasionally restraining his voice, you wouldn't know this was rehearsal footage. The effort and passion that went into all of his dancing seemed to match what you would expect from an actual live performance. It was great to see that after all this time has gone by, he is still passionate about doing these songs proper justice.

Michael Jackson is a musical and dancing genius, however communication didn't seem to be his thing. During one scene he stops a song and casualy tattles to the director that, "My ear monitors feel like some's pushing their fist right into my head, I know you all mean well but I can't concentrate. But I tell you with love, that's L-O-V-E, love." 

The show's director responds, "Okay...So do you want them to change the volume or the mix? Do you want to hear more of something?"

After an awkward moment of contemplation Michael responds,"No, let's just bring things down." 

The movie is 1 hour and 51 minutes. I could have handled longer, the wife could have handled shorter. The theater gave away these cool faux-backstage passes so you felt special and I did!

On a side note, doesn't Jacko kinda look like the Other Mother from Coraline?

 

This Is Not It ....is stupid

My mom sent me the link to www.this-is-not-it.com. This website assumes that the Michael Jackson died by the hand of greed and that the movie is somehow tainted by it.

They are claiming that greed allowed Michael to die unnecessarily. Obviously no one wanted to Jacko to die, and AEG's interest in him was purely a financial one, as would be any concert promoter, that's their job. Before Jacko died he was completely broke, he was in a position where he had to make money somehow, regardless how his health was. It's reasonable to speculate that AEG encouraged him to do things that may not have been in his health's best interest but he's a big boy. Plus it's been pretty well known that Michael Jackson's kind of a stubborn fellow when it comes to taking other's advise anyway, he's going to do what he wants. But I'm sure AEG is responsible at some level but ultimately it was Michael's fault. It's just an unfortunate situation is all.

As for the movie painting an an unreal and idealized version of his last few days, I don't know I haven't seen it yet. No one ever made a promise that it was going to be a revealing provocative documentary, I always understood it was the video substitution for what the concerts were going to be. After all, AEG lots bazillions of dollars on his death, this way they make some money back and the fans get a little something, everyone's happy.